A week later and Texas is brought back to Earth a bit; losing to a top-15 team at home isn’t the worst thing, especially when it’s followed by a Demolition Man murderdeathkill of the worst Big 12 team. Losses happen in college basketball, unless you’re Gonzaga. What’s important is the overall body of work, especially in a season where the NCAA announced they’re going to pretty strictly follow the S-curve when seeding teams. Geography isn’t going to matter much, given all the teams are going to be in the same state. Sucks for them it will be Indiana, but whatever. Michigan got housed by Minnesota, Creighton lost to Butler, and Towson lost to James Madison, so anyone can lose in a week. touches finger to ear I’m being told the Towson game doesn’t matter.

If you watched this game, you should have noticed the off the charts level of intensity to this event. Both teams came out incredibly confident, traded blows all night, and were constantly chirping at each other. Tech got a technical when McCullar was jawing at Ramey who was on the Texas bench at that moment, but it was a culmination of Ramey and about half of each team constantly talking shit to each other. Both teams knew what was up from the jump and neither side backed down at any point. The energy was insane, and I can only imagine what it would have been like if there was a full house in attendance. It was 2+ hours of Bighorns butting heads, and it was glorious.

(That screenshot would definitely be targeting in football. Also I’m pretty sure that Bighorn is from Europe.)

The first half of this game was the first time this season I was very conscious of Texas being up by a fluke. Andrew Jones went off in the first half, scoring 18 points and hitting shots when there was even a sliver of daylight. His 18-point outburst obscured the fact that this was otherwise a pretty close contest when you consider everything; the first-half free throws were in Tech’s favor which kept things close when Texas was shooting a percentage (50% overall, 57% from three) that Tech generally does not allow. That 10-point halftime lead felt very vulnerable to me if Tech sorted out some things, which they did.

The thing about Tech’s defense - and this isn’t exactly new - is that they help aggressively. They want guards to drive from the wings and either take a charge or trap them in the short corner. This works against most teams (hence why Scott Drew gave up his 1-3-1 zone and adopted most of these principles a couple of years ago, because he’s a thief…like most coaches, so maybe let’s just move on) and Texas was pretty clearly expecting it, so they would stop at that short corner and try to pass out of it. Their options were either to split the trap and pocket pass to a big or to pass out to the perimeter where a guard would take the three. This is where Andrew Jones came in, he hit a couple of these threes. This is the gamble of the no-middle defense, that you don’t have either the bigs or the shooters to take advantage of the trap. Texas has both, and they were able to take advantage in the first half. In the second half the perimeter shots were less of a factor, but the bigs still took advantage. Well, one big.

There are a fair number of valid criticisms of Jericho Sims, but this game is only in play because Sims did Sims things. He grabbed rebounds, hit putbacks, played within himself, and was arguably the best perimeter defender against Mac McClung. Tech was trying to get him switched onto McClung by design - because getting a big on McClung is a mismatch most games - and Sims defended him straight-up over and over again. I don’t have the level of Synergy account where I can watch film of every Sims/McClung perimeter touch, but every time I noticed it Jericho Sims was keeping McClung at bay. Yes, Sims should have hit more free throws, but he’s a 65% free throw shooter so you’re going to have ups and downs. He was great in every other area of the game against Tech.

Mac McClung is rapidly rising up my chart of most-hated players; I don’t know if he’s top five all-time - he might be - but he’s a junior so there’s plenty of time for him to ascend to at or near the top. I don’t know if there’s anyone who will dislodge Oliver Miller from #1 or <insert a half-dozen Duke players> from their positions in the top ten, but he might be the most hateable Big 12 player this side of Eduardo Najera. There are many reasons why, from his punchable face to his regular theatrical exaggeration of contact (which was fine when Isaiah Taylor did it but don’t worry about that right now) but the thing that makes a guy like him extremely hateable is that he’s also sigh so good. He made so many individual plays in that game prior to the game-winner, plays that were versatile and off-script and shouldn’t have worked but did. The guys you hate the most as players are at that level because you recognize they’re ballers; I could run across Bobby Hurley at a local Kroger tomorrow and I still might want to punch him, in part because he played for Duke and in part because he was so goddamn good when he played at Duke. I’m never going to feel those feelings for Flo Thamba, that’s not how this works. So yea, I’m tipping my cap to McClung, but I’m doing it so he doesn’t see me reach for my brass knuckles. Chris Beard is getting his money’s worth.

The last three minutes is going to get the bulk of the attention as it relates to Courtney Ramey, which makes sense since he bricked a layup and gave up a terrible turnover. What may not get as much attention is that Ramey & Coleman combined to go 1-12 from inside the arc. It’s weird that they were able to go 7-14 from three but 1-12 from two; some of it was on account of them missing shots they usually hit - the pull-up from the free throw line is usually a reliable make for Coleman - and some of it was Tech locking down on their tendencies.

I appreciate Ramey taking ownership of his mistakes in the postgame interview. Maturity involves shouldering the blame when you fuck up, and Ramey was very forthright in his answers about where he messed up. This is one of those little signs of how Ramey is evolving as a player and a person, he might have let that stew for a week a couple of years ago. Not so much this year.

There are a handful of teams each year who reach the level where you see them lose and think “they’re going to take that out on their next opponent”. Basically any time I see Kansas take a big L I expect them to come out of the gate pissed off against their next opponent, West Virginia is another where I think Huggins is going to shove his foot so far up their ass that they’ll be spitting nails in the next game. If I see the Mountaineers lose by 15+ the game before Texas, I groan because I know what’s coming. Tonight, Texas was that team; from the jump they were all over Kansas State. They went up 10-2 through a combination of stout defense and aggressive offense that I don’t often see. Shaka Smart likes to talk about playing with a ‘level of violence’ and large chunks of this game were violent AF. Texas was a level above Kansas State for 35 minutes; this was less a basketball game than a snuff film. Do not let the final score fool you, Texas murdered more Wildcats than Dolores from Westworld. It was 79-53 with 4:38 left in the game, Texas coasted to the finish line but this game was never once in doubt. Here’s the KenPom in-game win probability graph:

Wait, hang on, that’s not it:

There we go.

It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a Texas squad come back from a loss and garrote an opponent like this; they may not win the conference but they sent a message tonight which anyone who did more than look at the final box score can see. The Man in Black is going to avoid this maze.

Hepa got the start, in part because Kai Jones, Greg Brown, and Brock Cunningham were out for COVID reasons (and they’ll be out if the Iowa State game happens on Wednesday) and in part because Shaka Smart knew Texas was playing a bad KSU squad. It’s a reward for a guy who is very much a team player, constantly talking on he bench and is graduating in 3 years with a GPA I never deigned to consider achievable. Hepa responded with five threes, which is one less than Will Baker scored all of last season. His athleticism is and will be a limitation going forward, but if he’s going to hammer threes at anything approaching this rate next season then he’ll be a positive for the ‘21-’22 squad. He missed a shot at the rim, presumably because he’s not used to shooting from that close up. Also he still defends a bit like a Japanese Spider Crab, but he communicates so well on the court it isn’t the worst thing in the world. If he’s a big part of next year’s rotation they will have to work on getting him help because players can still turn the corner on him too easily, but that’s an issue for another day.

The nice thing about having incredible depth is that a guy like Febres can make his season debut in conference play and make a positive contribution. He is in some ways still the same guy, a streaky shooter with stroke that looks good every time it leaves his hand even if it hits the side of the rim. But he showed an increased defensive awareness tonight; the blocks were a good use of his wingspan, but he also did a good job of picking his spots. He also didn’t immediately shoot the ball every time he got it; he was looking at his surroundings and passing when it made sense, hence the three assists. His five rebounds were a positive as well; Febres played 22 minutes and acquitted himself well for a guy getting his first run of the year in conference play. I don’t know what the future holds for him, though I would guess he plays some minutes against Iowa State. Beyond that? We will see.

Hamm fouled out in 17 minutes against a Wildcats team who wasn’t really feeding the post, marking his third disqualification of the season. I really want to see the ‘5 fouls in 5 minutes’ thing happen; maybe against Kentucky? fingers crossed I know wishing for this is likely to bite me in the ass in the worst way, but honestly it would be amazing to see. I would get a “5 in 5” shirt made with the back of it showing him looking shocked with his hands up in a plaintive gesture, and I would ask him to autograph it. I fully acknowledge that I am too invested in this.

This team is so fun.

We’re five games into the season and Jericho Sims has the best eFG% and TS% of any player in the Big 12. ANY player. He’s also the 9th-best defensive rebounder and 12th-best offensive rebounder so far in the conference. He’s making nearly 79% of his shots in conference play, gathering 9.7% of offensive rebounding chances, and 17.6% of defensive rebounding chances. He’s not Udoka (who is) but he’s playing his role extremely well. He even cracked a smile against Kansas State, which means he’s smiled on court at least twice this season. TWICE!

Oh, and he’s 11th-best at block percentage in conference play.

Until one of them loses, Gonzaga and Baylor are basically locks for the first two 1-seeds. This means there are two 1-seeds left, and Texas is battling with the following teams for consideration: Michigan, Tennessee, Iowa, Villanova, and Houston. Villanova hasn’t played since December 23rd and maybe at some point that starts to cost them, but they have the head-to-head win so it’s hard to argue them being ahead. Michigan lost today but could win the Big 10 which means they’re probably ahead of a 2nd/3rd-place Big 12 team, and Iowa has the same general argument. Tennessee is fighting Alabama for the SEC title so they each potentially have their own argument for being ahead of Texas at the end of the season. Given that Texas is probably going to pick up a few more losses along the way, talk of a 1-seed is premature at best. We can reconvene again in early March; for now it’s probably good to say that Texas is on a trajectory of a top-4 seed with potential to improve. Unless COVID ravages the team, we’re unlikely to ever have to talk about the bubble. Huzzah!

(Is huzzah! still a thing?)

(No?)

(What about ‘oh, dip!’?)

Here is my list of Texas’ remaining games in order of hardest to easiest:

at Baylor (postponed)

vs Baylor

at Texas Tech

vs Kansas

at Oklahoma State

vs West Virginia

at Kentucky (non-conference)

at Oklahoma

at TCU

vs Oklahoma

at Iowa State (just postponed per Texas announcement)

vs TCU

at Kansas State

vs Kansas State

So yea, the easiest remaining game is done. Texas is four games into their ‘easy’ 7-game stretch and they’re 3-1; if they can emerge 6-1 then the discussion of if Texas is ready to battle can begin…in part because they will be a week away from facing Baylor. As it stands now, Texas is arguably the only team within earshot of Baylor for the conference title; Kansas could insert itself into the conversation if they beat the Bears on Monday, and Tech with McCullar might still have a say, though they now have three losses in conference play so it would involve Baylor losing three games out of the next ~11 (they only have 16 conference games due to postponements) and some tiebreakers. Never say never, but I suspect the most likely course is that the Big 12 title goes to a team with two or fewer losses. KenPom has Texas’ conference record at 12-5, which means a 7-4 conference record the rest of the way pending reschedules. If they can win at Tech or the home game against Baylor, maybe they’re cooking with gas.

LonghornRdTrip is keeping track of postponed Big 12 games. I bring this up because it’s not a given the Iowa State game happens on Wednesday (EDIT: Texas just announced this is postponed as ISU is still paused) and because there are already two Baylor games, two West Virginia games, and two Oklahoma State games in the list. There is one week between the end of the regular season and the conference tournament, so the Big 12 is either going to have to start flipping around upcoming games or they’re going to have to start putting games in that week. They will need to decide which games ‘matter’; I would imagine the Baylor/Texas game is at or near the top of their list of priorities…unless they’re both in line for a 1-seed, in which case they might make a different choice. I could see the Big 12 let that rematch slide if they think it helps the conference get better spots in the tourney; we saw the Big 10 twist itself in a pretzel to get Ohio State into the football championship, I’m not putting anything past the conferences.

I watched three college basketball games today:

Michigan at Minnesota

Baylor at Texas Tech

Kansas State at Texas

Or to put it another way, I watched games with:

Dan Dakich

Dick Vitale

Lowell Galindo

Why does ESPN hate me?

Dan Dakich is a crank, and Dick Vitale spent a significant chunk of the broadcast complaining about the ability of players to transfer. The fact that he was using the Baylor/Tech game to do this, featuring a pair of teams filled to the brim with transfers, and featuring a quote from King of the Transfer Wars Chris Beard complaining about the issues of allowing transfers because irony is fucking dead, is incredible. Dick Vitale said allowing players to transfer without penalty “will ruin college basketball” even though few things ruin college basketball more than Dick Vitale talking over them; he spent approximately 80% of the broadcast either complaining about transfers or hocking some charity raffle he was running. I turned down the audio and played music while I watched, it was so much better. I need to do this more often, it was magical when Bill Walton was snorting mescaline during the Asheville/Maui Invitational.

I shouldn’t put Lowell in this group; Lowell isn’t as grating as those two. He’s having a conversation during a game where the conversation is loosely about the game in front of him, and I can only imagine steering Lance Blanks through a 2+ hour broadcast is exhausting even for a guy whose energy is akin to a ferret that has been fed cocaine for the last 12 hours. He’s also literally being muzzled by a mask right now since the state of Texas has decided COVID is a myth and his job entails being indoors for hours on end, so he’s going through some things. He’s a trooper, a cocaine ferret trooper.

I’ve watched this at least 15 times and I laugh out loud every time. If these guys get Milkshake Duck’ed I do not want to know, I need this 11 seconds of pure joy in my life.

P.S. I miss Vine, the original home for things like this.

Wednesday, Jan 20: at Iowa State 8 PM CT (ESPN+) - 81% KenPom win probability

Saturday, Jan 23: at TCU 7 PM CT (ESPN2) - 81% KenPom win probability

Please remember to check out Pretend We’re Football; our next show will come out by…Tuesday? Also we have a Twitter account now, which may be useful for those of you who want only my/our sports opinions. My next recap will come out after the TCU game. Also, I have a Patreon if you want to tip me for making dated Westworld references.

Writing tunes provided by Drumcomplex.